The Cli-Fi Report is a portal for all things cli-fi, a subgenre of speculative fiction, with new links from blogs to videos to Wikipedia to Twitter to news links and Facebook Groups. See the portal, the largest Cli-Fi portal on the Internet at cli-fi.net / MEDIA inquiries at: danbloom@gmail.com

Sunday, December 10, 2017

A friend of the global cli-fi world tells me today a funny story. A PhD student in California, she writes: “Cli-fi” makes me think of Plo Kloon and other goofy 'Star Wars' names ." I never heard of this character.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Colorado high school combines writing class with cli-fi novel by local author

By Amy BoundsStaff Writer

Posted: 12/09/2017 02:00:00 PM MST

Student Tristan Bloom works out a plot line for his science and environment writing assignment with instructor Lili Adeli during their class at Boulder Prep High School on Thursday. (Paul Aiken / Staff Photographer)

Boulder Prep High School is using the cli-fi genre to hook reluctant readers and science fans on language arts.
The year-round charter school in Gunbarrel is piloting a class that combines climate change science with literacy using a cli-fi book written by local author William Liggett.
"We have a lot of science oriented students who hate language arts," said Boulder Prep Headmaster Lili Adeli. "We were trying to find an interesting way to offer language arts for them. It's worked out really well."
Math and science teacher Justin St. Onge, who's co-teaching the class with Adeli, met at a book signing at the Boulder Public Library for his novel, "Watermelon Snow."
They struck up a conversation, developing an idea for a cli-fi class based on "Watermelon Snow." Watermelon snow is the term used for snow that's painted pink by algae that grows on glaciers — and the pink snow absorbs more sun, melting it faster.
"Watermelon Snow," which published in June, is about a female professor who leads a team studying the Blue Glacier in the Olympic Mountains of Washington. The plot includes a NASA behavioral science observer and a storm that forces an evacuation.
"It's a science-based cli-fi adventure," Liggett said.
Liggett joins the Boulder Prep class each day to observe and answer student questions as they read the book.

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"Having the author here so we could ask questions was extremely important," said junior Tristan Bloom. "I've learned a lot about writing books."
The class alternates between reviewing students' science topics and teaching language arts. In a recent class, students listened to a short cli-fi story, then filled out a story map with ideas for characters, a climax and rising and falling action to help them write their own short story.
"It's a really interdisciplinary way to teach climate change science and reading and writing skills," St. Onge said.
Freshman Brian Palmer said it's been "a little easier" than a more traditional "boring" language arts class.
"There's actually some science," he said. "It's interesting learning about it."
Sophomore Keegan Theiss said he signed up for the class because he was interested in climate science.
"It's been great," he said, adding that he's learned about the possibility of diseases springing from melted ice caps and the dangers of rising sea levels.
Senior Alex Tarrant read ahead of the class, finishing the novel early.
"I got really into it," Alex said. "The author used so many details. I could really visualize it and see what they were seeing. I really like science, and I'm not as into language arts. This made language arts better for me."Amy Bounds: 303-473-1341, boundsa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/boundsa

Friday, December 8, 2017

Jennifer Senior, one of the daily book reviewers on staff at the New York Times finally reviews Bill McKibben's debut cli-fi lite novel RADIO FREE VERMONT 30 days after publication on November 7 after dozens of small papers reviewed the book will 5 stars and thumbs up -- this way with a headline reading ''A Polite Drive for Secession in ‘Radio Free Vermont’''

The dedication page of the novel reads "For Spunky Knowsalot" who is, according to sources the New York York Times did not check with for confirmation, is none other than Bill's writer wife Sue Halpern, like McKibben, a longtime transplanted Vermonter, she from New York, he from Boston.

EXCERPT from the paywalled review, with slight editorial annotations and edits here by this blogger for amplification and clarification:

".....Like Mailer and Breslin, the central character of Vern Barclay, the old-school radio host and "forever young" hero of Bill McKibben’s ''cli-fi lite'' debut novel “Radio Free Vermont,” doesn’t truly believe he’ll have any success with the secessionist movement he leads. He’s an accidental renegade, a guy who fell backward into the revolution business while reporting his final story.

Walmart’s management assumed Barclay was responsible for the stunt. He wasn’t. It was the handiwork of a 19-year-old hacker and social activist named Perry, a kid Barclay had never met before. It didn’t matter; he and Perry were now in the soup together. The two fled, took refuge in an old farmhouse and began a series of untraceable podcasts. “Underground, underfoot and underpowered” became its tagline, with every broadcast sponsored by a different Vermont-made craft beer. Vermont has almost as many microbreweries making craft beer as it does pet cats.

That was that. A movement for Vermont’s independence was born.

.....“Radio Free Vermont” is a charming bit of artisanal resistance lit. It’s a bit rough, with the occasional nailhead poking up too high. (Perry’s upspeak? It gets to be, um, a bit much?) But what’s surprising is how well-crafted the book is overall; how unhokey its folksiness feels, and how true its observations ring.

The finest running joke in “Radio Free Vermont” — not least for being so plausible — is that Barclay and his supporters are a supremely pleasant group of separatists.

When he disrupts the canned music at Starbucks to point out that Vermont has plenty of locally owned coffee shops, he signs off with, “Remember: small is kind of nice.” When his pal Sylvia, the woman who provides him shelter in her farmhouse, hijacks a Coors truck — who needs Big Beer in a state with Hill Farmstead and Heady Topper? — she hands the driver a picnic lunch and apologizes for including only one Long Trail Coffee Stout.

“We’re serious about DUI in this state,” she says, “but I think you’ll find it filling.”

Lest you think this is just the latest blue-state-flavored ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s, remember: Vermonters love their guns.

The ability to shoot them — while skiing — figures prominently in the plot. Barclay is a former coach of high school biathletes. One of his former students, a woman named Trance, won a gold medal in the Olympics, was a sharpshooter in Iraq and ultimately becomes a heroine of the Vermont independence movement.

“Radio Free Vermont” is more than “A Fable of Resistance,” as its subtitle says.

It’s a love letter to the modest, treed-in landscape of Vermont, which Barclay wouldn’t trade for all the grandeur of Montana.

It’s a dirge for the intense cold, which Barclay sorely misses — why is the world now brown in January, rather than white? (“It made him feel old,” McKibben writes, “as if he’d outlived the very climate of his life.”)

It is an elegy for a slower, saner Vermont — “the world’s rush was doing it in” — and dependable Yankee virtues, like neighborliness and self-reliance and financial prudence.

The book also helps contextualize Bernie Sanders’s anti-establishment crankiness. Barclay likes to remind his listeners that Vermont was once its own republic.

Throughout the story, the secessionist movement gains in popularity. Bumper stickers start appearing on cars: “Barclay for Governor.” “Barclay for Prime Minister.”

Post offices start flying a new Free Vermont flag designed by Barclay’s mother. (The New York Times in the novel even runs a Timesy feature story under the headline, “In Quaint Green Mountain Hamlets, a Push For Independence.” Gotta admit that’s pretty good. Yes, Jen, very good!) Barclay increasingly devotes his podcasts to questions of feasibility were a divorce to take place: Can Vermonters defend themselves with guns? How would its citizens collect on their Social Security?

McKibben never suggests he truly believes secession is the solution in times of political turmoil.

If anything, it’s the opposite; Barclay eventually worries he’s asking people “to do something a little dangerous and more than a little weird.”

What he’s proposing is merely a thought experiment, daring the reader to ponder the virtues of smallness in an age of military and corporate gigantism. In his acknowledgments, he notes that Vermont has already had one “minor-league attempt” at a secession movement, about a decade ago, that failed, spectacularly.

The dedication page of the novel itself reads "For Spunky Knowsalot" who is, according to sources the New York York Times did not check with for confirmation, is none other than Bill's writer wife Sue Halpern, like McKibben, a longtime transplanted Vermonter, she from New York, he from Boston.

But if non-Vermonters need refuge in the months or years ahead of the evil undemocratic Hitlerian Trump administration, Bill adds in his afterword: “you’re all welcome to come to the Green Mountain State. We’ll teach you to drive dirt roads in mud season.”

In his public appearances, McKibben, a Vermonter and one of the best-known environmentalists of our age, can be an extremely droll and appealing Cassandra. But there’s little in his many previous books to suggest he can pull off a novel-length satire. He’s a serious man. (To Bill Maher, who complained that McKibben wasn’t giving him enough hopeful news, the author said: “This is your fault. You asked someone on whose most famous book was called ‘The End of Nature,’ O.K.?”)

Yet “Radio Free Vermont” is a charming bit of artisanal resistance lit. It’s a bit rough, with the occasional nailhead poking up too high. (Perry’s upspeak? It gets to be, um, a bit much?) But what’s surprising is how well-crafted the book is overall; how unhokey its folksiness feels, and how true its observations ring.

The finest running joke in “Radio Free Vermont” — not least for being so plausible — is that Barclay and his supporters are a supremely pleasant group of separatists. When he disrupts the canned music at Starbucks to point out that Vermont has plenty of locally owned coffee shops, he signs off with, “Remember: small is kind of nice.” When his pal Sylvia, the woman who provides him shelter in her farmhouse, hijacks a Coors truck — who needs Big Beer in a state with Hill Farmstead and Heady Topper? — she hands the driver a picnic lunch and apologizes for including only one Long Trail Coffee Stout. “We’re serious about DUI in this state,” she says, “but I think you’ll find it filling.”

She narrates a plotline that is fairly predictable, given the cache of recent dystopian fiction and cli-fi (climate-change fiction) work being published in the last few years: Something very bad happened on Earth rendering it nearly uninhabitable. An evil dictator builds a fleet of spaceships that he tethers to the ...

Recently, I participated as a scientist in a forum with Screen Australia, looking at how cli-fi might communicate the issues around climate change in new ways. I'm a heatwave scientist and I'd love to see a cli-fi story bringing the experience of heatwaves to light. After the forum, Screen Australia put out a call ...

Described by The Independent as "Virginia Woolf does cli-fi" it's more about the steady beat of love and life that can endure amid total dislocation. Elizabeth Strout's Anything is Possible (Penguin) deals with fundamental human truths: our imperfect ways of loving, our desire to feel superior to others, our ...

The opening serves up a bit of cli-fi (climate change-inspired dystopian science fiction), both nostalgic and macabre: “After the hurricane hit Miami in 2037,” it begins, “a foot of sand covered the famous bow-tie floor in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. A dead manatee floated in the pool ...

Given that, it seems the wise course of action on climate communications is to encourage diversity, experimentation, even experimentationw in novels and movies, and most of all, a spirit of charity and the assumption of good faith toward others who are attempting to tell the same story in different ways.

It is a very big story. Not everyone needs to present it as a scientist would; not everyone needs to understand it as a scientist would understand it. There are as many ways to approach it as there are people, room for fear and hope and wonder and suspense and sadness and curiosity and all the rest of human experience. One of those ways to approach this is through the publication of cli-fi novels and the release of cli-fi movies.

On climate comms, I think people are better off trusting the ancient art of Knowing Your Audience.

If you're a novelist, write that cli-fi novel. If you're a movie producer, make that cl-fi movie. Do what you’re good at; speak to people you think you might be able to reach. David Wallace-Wells was good at reaching millions of casual magazine readers. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe is out talking to evangelicals and conservatives. Her fellow climate scientist Michael Mann is delivering facts to Bill Maher’s audience (no mean feat). Bill McKibben is writing evocative, terrifying essays. Al Gore is doing his 24 Hours of Reality thing. Reporters at E&E and the New York Times climate desk are staying on top of breaking news. Analysts at places like Carbon Brief are bringing the numbers and charts. Young activists are connecting climate change to economic justice and urbanism.

Will any of it resonate? Will it, in part or collectively, inspire any democratic action? Hell if I know. Hell if you know. It’s a big story, though, and we need lots more people telling it with cli-fi novels and movies, too.

So, yes, scientific accuracy is important. But we should also remember that humans are complicated and diverse and need all sorts of cli-fi narratives, images, facts, tropes, and other forms of group reinforcement to really get something this big. It’s a lot to take in, especially if, like most people, you don’t think like a scientist.

Taiwan’s Ablaze Image has picked up international rights to Hsiao Ya-chuan’s Father To Son, produced by Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Both filmmakers have a long association with Cannes – Hsiao’s Mirror Image was selected for Director’s Fortnight in 2001, while Hou won best director at Cannes in 2015 for The Assassin.
Hsiao’s Father To Sonfollows two journeys of self-reconciliation – a 60-year-old man with a serious illness travels to Japan to search for the father who abandoned him 50 years ago, accompanied by his son, while a young man connected to his past arrives in Taiwan.

The film stars Michael JQ Huang, Chuang Kai-Hsun, Aria Wang and Lu Hsueh-Feng.
Hsiao’s more recent credits include Taipei Exchanges, which won an audience award at Taipei Film Festival in 2010, and a segment of omnibus film 10+10.

The author, 30, was born in 1987 in Germany and still lives there where she works at a book publishing company. This interview was conducted in early December by email. For readers who cannot read the original story in German, below you will find a Google Machine translation, informal and unofficial, just to give you a feeling for the story arc in English.

DAN BLOOM:Did you write this story before the Fischer-Tor ''cli-fi'' short story contest was announced earlier this year or was it already in your files? Or did you write it directly for the TOR contest?

LISA-MARIE REUTER:The story was written about one year prior to the contest but remained unpublished at first. It came back to my mind when I saw an ad for the cli-fi-contest online and I submitted it right away.

DANBLOOM: When did you visit India, this year or last year or in 2014 or when? And did you visit India as a tourist just to visit or were you doing research for a possible short story or novel at the same time?

LISA-MARIE REUTER: I've visited India seven times so far since 2009 and travelled there quite a lot. I majored in Indian Studies at university, so I’m also familiar with India’s academic sphere and did some research there for academic purposes. Over the years I became friends with Indians in and out of universities and wish I could see them more often.

DAN BLOOM: When does your story take place? In the near future? Such as 2080? Or in the distant future, such as 2300 A.D.? Or do you prefer not to tell readers in the story when it is taking place and let the readers guess the time frame? In your own mind, when you wrote the story, what was the general time frame you were thinking of?

LISA-MARIE REUTER: There’s a small hint within the story regarding the time frame, and I’d rather leave it to the readers to discover it and draw their own conclusions.

DANBLOOM: Climate fiction stories and novels and movies are gaining in popularity now worldwide, and in Germany, too. Are there many literary critics using the term "climate fiction" or its short nickname of "cli-fi" in newspaper or magazine articles or reviews of cli-fi novels? And does the German media use the English terms for climate fiction and cli-fi or do they use a German term such as ''klimawandelfiktion'' (please teach me how to say "climate fiction" in German).

LISA-MARIE REUTER: Personally, I had not heard the term before I came across the Tor-Online contest, but I guess that people who are more involved in the sci-fi scene than I am might be familiar with it. I think the genre is referred to as “climate fiction” in Germany too, since it corresponds to the term “science fiction”, which is widely used here. It’s actually hard to think of a German term which would be as catchy as “cli-fi”.

DAN BLOOM: Do you think cli-fi novels and stories and movies will become more popular in Germany in the next 10 to 20 years? Or is the German public not interested in cli-fi stories?

LISA-MARIE REUTER: I think there definitely is a general interest for climate related topics in Germany, since environmental awareness has been quite large here for some decades and sustainable power supply is a big issue in politics these days. Cli-fi is still a very small segment within the literary world but I could well imagine that it might grow over the next few years.

DAN BLOOM: In your story, who is Yusuf? An Indian? Or if not Indian, from what nation does he come from?

LISA-MARIE REUTER: He is a native of Varanasi, so, definitely Indian.

DAN BLOOM: Why did you set your story in India ? is there something special about India and the Ganges River and climate change worries that inspired you to set the story there?

LISA-MARIE REUTER: I chose India as a setting mainly because even nowadays it is much more affected by climate change than my own home region in central Europe. During the past several years droughts and floods have affected millions of people there. Also, I’ve simply fallen in love with India’s majestic rivers, be it Ganga, Yamuna, or most recently the breathtakingly broad Brahmaputra in Assam.

DAN BLOOM: Will your story be translated in the future into French, Italian, Spanish, Hindi, or English, perhaps?

LISA-MARIE REUTER: There are no such plans at the moment, at least as far as I am aware. Let’s see what the future brings.

DAN BLOOM: You are 30 years old. Regarding global warming and the future of humankind, are you an optimist or a pessimist or a realist or a prophet? Can you explain?

LISA-MARIE REUTER: I have to admit that I am a pessimist by nature. I try to be as realistic as possible, though, and secretly always hope for the best. I am actually less worried about humankind than about all the other magnificent but less adaptable species we share this planet with.

DANBLOOM: Will you turn your short story into a novel one day in the future?

LISA-MARIE REUTER: Most likely not this story, but I might come up with some other ideas for a proper cli-fi-novel one of these days.

DANBLOOM: You work for a publishing company in Germany. What is your job there? Editor? Marketing? PR? Sales?

LISA-MARIE REUTER: I work there as a trainee, so I basically do a little bit of everything, except editing.

READERS AROUND THE WORLD! Welcome to some global news about cli-fi fiction, which mainly deals with the effects of climate change. The Fischer publishing house recently sponsored a cli-fi short story contest, with the judges looking for the best story (in the German language) around the issue of climate change and its impact.

I myself wanted to get involved in this interesting topic, of course, and although it is my story has managed not to slot 1, so she finds herself still together with other ambitious authors and authors in the anthology "The snow of tomorrow", edited by Peggy Weber Gehrke, again. The eBook is published in January and I am very happy that, for the first time with such a fantastic project. For those who are interested in this topic and fantastic literature in general, should be 28. January 2018 add and already in the eBook to try it! The book is published by the publishing house for modern fantasy gehrke.

Tod einer Göttin -- Death of a Goddess (by Lisa-Marie Reuter)

Varanasi, die heiligste Stadt Indiens. Vom Ganges ist nur noch ein trübes Rinnsal übrig. Seine Namensvetterin und Erzählerin dieser Geschichte, Ganga, hat gerade ihren neuen Job bei der Mordkommission angetreten, als plötzlich im größten Hindu-Tempel ein Gläubiger Amok läuft. Und Ganga wird in die politischen Ränke der Jahrtausende alten Stadt verstrickt …»Tod einer Göttin« ist die Sieger-Story des ersten TOR ONLINE-Kurzgeschichtenwettbewerbs, für den unter dem Titel »Der Schnee von morgen« ein innovativer Beitrag zur Climate Fiction gesucht war.INFORMAL GOOGLE MACHINETRANSLATION -- Varanasi, the holiest city in India. From the Ganges is still just a murky trickle left. His name Svet trumpeter and narrator of this story, Ganga has just completed her new job in the homicide squad, when all of a sudden in the largest Hindu Temple a believer is running amok. And Ganga in the political intrigues of the thousand-year-old city mats …"death of a goddess" is the winner of the first Online Short Story Competition, for the under the title "The snow of tomorrow," an innovative contribution to climate fiction was searched.
***

"The dogs are nervous today," said Yusuf, as he sat down next to me on the stone steps.

I unleashed my view from the gentle curve of the ghats, which is in the direction of the north-east. The brick bathing places were for centuries as a symbol of Varanasi. Three kilometers of abandoned palaces and temples, ancient stairs and smoking combustion. Sluggish bell ringing and the scent of sandalwood. In the background, the glittering skyline of New-Kashi. The Sunrise was reflected on the glass fronts of the banks and office towers, shopping malls and luxury high-rise buildings, as he once had mirrored on the waters of the Ganges at our feet. Now the river was only a trickle of a few tens of meters in diameter. Who from the steps down to the water had a stone's throw of dirty sand.
I squinted his eyes and shielded my face with his hand against the sun. A crowd on the shores balgte durrer stray dog. A bitch with hanging sucked back her boys, other dogs stood with the front-runs in the river and drank wine the oily water.
Yusuf looked at the animals, then to the sky. "Perhaps the monsoon still on time. You feel something like that."
I stifled a yawn and tapped on my i-live around. Since Apple had swallowed the Tata Group, the "i" for "India".
"No Chance, Uncle Yusuf. The predictions are clear. Definitely no rain in the next two weeks."
"Well, if your miracle box that says girl," sighed the old man and began to node the bags that he had brought with him. The rustle of thin plastic, the dogs on the ears. A few of them came closer.
"Were not here for a long time, Ganga," he continued, as he tugged and dry chapatis in pieces in a bowl of cold lentil soup single density. "Thought you wanted your big sister no longer see again, before it comes to an end with her."
Again I picked up the view to the river, whose name I wore. In fact, it was a shock, the once so powerful Ganga - a goddess on earth, if you wanted to the Hindus believe - in its current state. The unspoken hung between Yusuf and i know that this is perhaps your last summer in the holy city. In Patna, almost 300 kilometers down the river, dried up completely during the hot months you have been around for years. India, this greedy giant, had his thousand-year-old lifeline sucked almost empty.
I had guessed that it was flowing around my sister so bad, I would have perhaps previously returned to Varanasi, the city where I was born and grew up; had not waited until me Delhi, this brutal, glowing steadily proliferating juggernaut, finally joined by itself. Eight years I had tried to brute force to the outbreaks, the ostentation of obscene cruelty to get used to it, in the capital city of the day-to-day business. I had my job there, in the conviction that the living conditions in the largest city in the world for the better. A few weeks ago, I had admitted my mistake and was head over heels fled.
The dogs had detected Yusuf and intentions expressed themselves around our feet winselnd. I looked at her protruding ribs, your raudiges coat, the bleeding points behind the ears. The animals had only eyes for Yusuf, their Messiah.
"I wasn't sure whether I would meet you here," I admitted to. "You risk getting a lot since the disease..."

SECOND EXCERPT:

On a world level sought feverishly about the origin of the epidemic. The seeds were examined and classified according to their mode of the gene isolated, the lethal mutation. Would you be prepared next year. You created a list of pollutants, the growth of the single-celled organisms called, and pursuing the toxic substances back to their origins. Factory owners, always with bribes can steal from the responsibility, would be hard to account.
The GHATS were in this weeks as extinct. The inhabitants of their goddess Vara asis remained remote. For centuries, the river water, garbage and poison swallowed his patient in the service of dams and nuclear power plants, and the sins washed away by the faithful. Now it seemed the people, as if it had been destroyed him, the venerable and wanted to remember their wickedness, shortly before his death.
On the Bureau would have been the case quickly to the file. The homicide was not responsible, temple gate had proved as wrong track.
The day after the funeral of Yusuf, i went to the river. I used my identity card, in order to get behind the barriers, and stomped over the glowing sand to the shore. There Ganga-Jal pureTM i pulled the bottle out of his pocket and let the synthetic content seep into the ground. I bent down and filled the bottle with water and screwed the lid back to real gear.
I complaint against Mahesh Trivedi and was not surprised that my superiors returned the thing under the carpet. I accepted the silence, the man offered me money, and pulled out the accusations.
Arnav went out of my way. After all, I was there, in the canteen at his table.
"I have canceled."
"It is … what a pity, Ganga. As it is now for you?"
"I don't know yet. Once out of the city. If you come back from the holiday, I'm already gone."
an escape. You will be good at it, girl.
Arnav swallowed. "When I asked you, whether … So, you can still come."
I laughed mirthlessly. "Seriously, arnav?"
"I like you, Ganga. As a friend. Even if you think…"
"Thou hast made me run into the knife. You knew what Trivedi was doing."
"I also knew that he would do you no harm. He wanted to intimidate you, just as he did with all power. Show you who is in charge. After he had let it be good grope."
"I see."
"No, you don't understand, Ganga." Arnavs cheeks reddened. "What Mahesh Trivedi says is law. He has here, all in the palm of your hand. I'm sorry that I couldn't help but you're not the only one who so what happened."
I nodded and stood up. "Nice holiday, arnav."
The next day I went to the Vishwanath temple and left me again in triv edis office. Also today I had to wait. I had hoped. I pulled the stolen glass bottle out of his pocket and presented them to the other on the desk.
Trivedi greeted me with balanced expression. "You wanted to speak to me, Miss Ganga?"
"I am here to apologize, Pandit-ji. It was not for me, without clear evidence to suspect. I pulled my consequences as a result of the matter and will leave the police service."
The priest smiled thinly. "This is a very decent of you, Miss Ganga. Then we can so our resentment
buried buried?" "is the right word, Pandit-ji," I replied.

If you're interested in climate change and #AGW themes make sure you check out @do_you_cli_fi_ via The Cli-Fi Report cli-fi.net An invaluable selection of news links and blog interviews with writers grappling with these issues. see cli-fi-books.blogspot.com #CliFi

If you are into dystopian cli-fi for young adults (YA), here's a very good debut novel that will be part of series. My partner liked it, so there’s that. And only her, I did, too! For more on cli-fi, YA and adults, see ''The Cli-Fi'' Report online. I'm over the moon on this one!

Last week I hosted award-winning fiction author and former magazine editor and manager, Cat Sparks into my vitual café. She had so much to discuss about climate change fiction that I decided to split the coffee chat into two parts.Here is a link to PART ONE.PART TWO

DL: I can't help thinking that reports on climate change are something world leaders are treating as indifferently as an annual health check up. Like they can't see the damage so why change their habits now, or they're waiting until they have a heart attack to do something about it. I'd also like to think that maybe it'd take a major disaster to wake them up, but major disasters are already happening. Do you think climate change fiction will play a role in inciting today's generation into demanding that our leaders do something? And what do you think is the biggest threat for the world right now?

CAT: There have been notable incidences where fiction impacted strongly enough on readers in the past, enough to change views about the world and initiate a call to action. Two examples: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) is generally credited with kick starting the modern environmental movement. It’s a non-fiction book that utilises the device of an embedded science fiction story, “A Fable for Tomorrow.”

Neville Shute’s best-seller On the Beach is said to have influenced Kennedy and definitely inspired many to anti-nuclear protest, both the book and film versions. Dr Helen Caldicott, then a 19-year-old medical student, credits the film as the catalyst which radicalised her into a lifetime of anti-nuclear activism.

The biggest threat to the world right now is complacency, particularly in the West, where so many of us lead soft, comfortable high-consumption lives. Most of us alive today are too young to have struggled through war rationing and the Great Depression& we’re used to thinking we deserve anything we can pay for. We trust in capitalism as some kind of protecting entity. We work and we buy stuff – that is how it has always been. Except that it hasn’t. History abounds with examples of societies who didn’t face up to the need for change, with dire consequences. Unfortunately, I don’t believe much of our society is going to change until cataclysmic events start affecting large numbers of middle class white people.

Complexity theory suggests that when societies develop beyond a certain point, collapse is inevitable. I don’t know if this is true, but I do know that parts of the world are going to become uninhabitable much sooner than we think. That hundreds of millions of people will be forced to move and globally we do not have a good track record of dealing with masses of displaced people.

Prof Brian Cox has expressed the opinion “if we can get through the next couple of decades and we begin to move off the planet, I think that then secures our future.” That’s quite a challenge. What will happen to us if we don’t?

As Bill McKibben says, “We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.”

I completely agree with that. Plus, the old Cold War nuclear threat is back on the table. There are at least 15,000 nukes out there – and at least two world leaders who might actually be crazy enough to use them. And then there’s all those other threats: weaponised pathogens, unregulated synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, autonomous combat weaponry, computer hacking, terrorism, species extinctions, antibiotic resistance, religious fundamentalism and the widening gap between rich and poor. We have never had a wider and more varied array of methods by which we could sterilise this planet.

CAT: We could eventually find ourselves in the situation where pretty much all realistic fiction is climate fiction by default. As Margaret Atwood says, it’s not climate change, it’s everything change.

The biggest lie is that Climate Change is not an existential threat. That it isn’t such a big deal, that it’s something likely to affect other people somewhere else. That the rich will be able to bunker down and somehow manage to continue business as usual. That we are not risking everything we have.

That continued dependence on fossil fuels will not have devastating consequences. People who make big money out of fossil fuel dependence are the ones holding back the sustainability revolution. The necessary technology to transition to renewables already exists and is being improved upon all the time – and there’s loads of money to be made in it. But the disruption to traditional financial infrastructures and power bases will be immense.

My view? When all the life known to exist in the entire universe is concentrated on one small blue planet, we are obliged to take that situation very seriously and behave accordingly.

It seems idiotic to have to point this out, but the last humans left standing should this planet has been reduced to a smoking ruin, will not be classifiable as “winners,” no matter what treasures they’ve manage to stuff into their underground bunkers.

DL:And lastly, are you a biscuit or cake kind of person? And what is your favourite biscuit/cake?

CAT: I like biscuits AND cake! In fact, the only cake I don't like is pavlova. My favourite cake would be a toss-up between lemon tart and Portugese tart. Never met a biscuit I didn’t like.DL: Thank so much to Cat for sharing information about climate change and how it translates into fiction.

MORE ABOUT CAT SPARKS

Cat Sparks is a multi-award-winning Australian author, editor, and artist, whose former employment includes media monitor, political and archaeological photographer, graphic designer, Fiction Editor for Cosmos Magazine, and Manager of Agog! Press. A 2012 Australian Council grant sent her to Florida to participate in Margaret Attwood's The time Machine Doorway workshop. she's currently finishing a PhD in climate change fiction. Her short story collection "The Bride Price" was published in 2013. her debut novel "Lotus Blue" was published by Talos Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, in 2017.